Witnesses said they saw police shoot at a man who was running away. One person who was too rattled to give his name said the victim appeared to have been shot more than once and was “still twitching.” He also said it appeared a police officer was shot.

That's a strange way to hear the facts. Did Rahami behave aggressively toward the police or was he only running away?

Another question is whether Rahami is connected to ISIS or some other radical Islamist terrorist group. Even assuming he is responsible for the bombs, we don't know why he did it. His name doesn't answer the question, and in fact, his backstory suggests a plausible theory of a more personal sort of violent acting out.

The Rahami family runs a restaurant that has a name that seems to poignantly strive for acceptance in America: First American Fried Chicken. But residents in the neighborhood had complained about it, purportedly because it was open all hours and drew rowdy, noisy patrons who weren't above hanging around and peeing in the nearby yards and driveways. The Linden City Council passed an ordinance that would force First American Fried Chicken to close at 10, and the Rahamis resisted the law, leading to friction with the police. The Rahamis brought a lawsuit against the Council, the mayor and various police officers, charging race and ethnic discrimination.

A frequent patron of the restaurant, Ryan McCann, 33, said Ahmad Rahami was friendly and did not seem outwardly angry. Rather, Mr. McCann said, he was obsessed with fast cars, specifically Honda civics custom built to race. Mr. Rahami wore Western clothing, hung out on the sidewalk with friends and often slipped his regular customers free food, he said.

“He’s a very friendly guy; he gave me free chicken,” Mr. McCann said. “He was always the most friendly man you ever met.”...

But another neighbor, Jessica Casanova, 23, said "They seemed secretive, a little mysterious.... They’re too serious all the time." Maybe it's a sad little story about a restaurant owner who got to feeling paranoid about the people who were interfering with his business. I know, it doesn't explain schlepping the bombs to Chelsea, but as Hillary Clinton chided us when first we heard of the bombing explosion: "It’s always wiser to wait until you have information before making conclusions."

When leaving a bomb, make sure to leave it in a safe place where it won't be stolen

MANHATTAN — Leave the bomb, take the bag.

In two separate cases, thieves snatching bags from city streets and train stations inadvertently helped law enforcement get the upper hand in an ongoing bomb spree that's hurt dozens of people and spans both sides of the Hudson River, sources said.

The day Ahmad Khan Rahami allegedly planted two bombs in Chelsea — one of which detonated on West 23rd Street — two thieves accidentally helped to disable his second pressure cooker bomb left inside a rolling suitcase on West 27th Street, sources said.

The young men, who sources described as being well-dressed, opened the bag and took the bomb out, sources said, before placing the explosive into a garbage bag and walking away with the rolling suitcase.

In Britain, I learned from watching Rumpole, they have a class of criminal called "Ordinary, decent, criminals" like the Timmons and Malloy clans. Perhaps that is what we have in NY protecting us from Lutherans like Sven with his bomb.

But residents in the neighborhood had complained about it, purportedly because it was open all hours and drew rowdy, noisy patrons who weren't above hanging around and peeing in the nearby yards and driveways. The Linden City Council passed an ordinance that would force First American Fried Chicken to close at 10, and the Rahamis resisted the law

I'll bet you dollars to donuts that First American Fried Chicken was selling more than batter-coated chicken parts, & the side items weren't on the menu.

Oh, gosh, let me think: what substance might an Afghani have family sources in the old country to help him move? That's right, flowers.

My initial guess:He will turn out to be a sad, unhappy fellow connected with a problem restaurant - who because he is a somewhat Radical Muslim, dealt with his problems by aiming a couple of bombs at innocent civilians. He will not turn out to have ties that can be demonstrated to international terrorism. He is, however, part of an international movement of ad hoc terror, which is even worse.As before, my link on Bayesian Inference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference

If Hillary Clinton and the mayor of New York did not guess that this was done by a Muslim, they should be discredited by any sane voter as being too incompetent to hold a responsible position.If they did guess that but pretended they didn't then they are good politicians and liars, so that'll be okay according to many voters.

"His name doesn't answer the question, and in fact, his backstory suggests a plausible theory of a more personal sort of violent acting out." If we "can't make conclusions," on what grounds, other than liberal wishful thinking, is this "plausible"?

"The Rahami family runs a restaurant that has a name that seems to poignantly strive for acceptance in America: First American Fried Chicken." If we don't have enough information to draw conclusions, on what grounds, other than liberal wishful thinking, would anyone infer poignant striving from a commercial name?

"The Linden City Council passed an ordinance that would force First American Fried Chicken to close at 10, and the Rahamis resisted the law, leading to friction with the police. The Rahamis brought a lawsuit against the Council, the mayor and various police officers, charging race and ethnic discrimination." Now there's some poignant striving for acceptance for you.

"I know, it doesn't explain schlepping the bombs to Chelsea, but as Hillary Clinton chided us when first we heard of the bombing explosion: "It’s always wiser to wait until you have information before making conclusions."" Sure. Except when it serves the prog narrative to jump to conclusions.

MikeR, you might think that you do not want your president and the mayor of your largest city guessing about things like that, especially in a country with a long history of bombings by non-Muslims, and in a country where the deadliest bombing was by a non-Muslim.

There is a more complete article that says citizens called police attention to a man sleeping in the street by a doorway, and when the cop woke him up, he pulled out a pistol and shot the cop and then took off running. The cop was wearing a "bulletproof" vest, so he recovered after being hit and pulled his own gun and shot after the suspect. Other cops had arrived by then and also started shooting.

Per Boston Herald story linked by Drudge, he may have been recently radicalized by a trip to Afghanistan. "At one point he left to go to Afghanistan, and two years ago he came back, popped up out of nowhere and he was real religious." By contrast, the lawsuit was brought about 5 years ago. More likely the trip to Afghanistan rather than minor run-ins with street cops radicalized the guy and made him decide that it was OK to start planting bombs in Manhattan that he knew would hurt non-police persons.

"Another question is whether Rahami is connected to ISIS or some other radical Islamist terrorist group. Even assuming he is responsible for the bombs, we don't know why he did it."

Whatever this particular clod's motives, we never really see someone directed and commanded by ISIS launching these overseas attacks, but rather attackers "inspired by" ISIS. It makes it more difficult to stop them because it suggests even if we somehow decimated ISIS in the Mid East, that won't prevent people in our country deciding to continue being "inspired" by ISIS.

But I'm sure we'll hear plenty about how dropping some more tonnage on Syria will prevent these attacks.

"your president and the mayor of your largest city guessing about things like that" It never stopped President Obama if the victim was black.

And limiting this to bombings is a bit disingenuous. Multiple (apparently coordinated) attacks in New York City in September. Hmm, I wonder people might consider an Occam's Razor theory that the bomber might be x?

Avoiding jumping to conclusions is a luxury for people who feel completely safe. Now that the suspect has been apprehended with a few new orifices, it is possibly a luxury we can afford. When bombs are going off and no one is sure what is going on is a poor time to recommend such activity. Recommending calm: fine. Recommending no violence unless necessary: sure. Don't jump to conclusions when bombs are going off? Stupid.

Also, Ann do you really think that regulatory run-ins with police is a "plausible" explanation for planting bombs that are designed to maim and kill civilians?Seems like that type of behavior is much more plausibly/consistently driven by twisted ideological worldviews (Unabomber, Ayers, numerous graduates of Columbia and Swarthmore, FALN, IRA).Yes, there are examples of people becoming bombers just because they get pissed -- George Metesky (the Mod Bomber) -- but I think they are the exception.

How with the liberal press cover for Obama and Hillary at this point? We saw how they swept into action during Benghazi fiasco. This is happening (a lot) on their watch. To try to spin this into a BS politically correct "okey doke" is not going to cut it.

"Not as good as the Guantanamo location. The 72 virgin bucket special is only good with the jihadi sauce. Unfortunately proceeds of this business seem to or may have gone towards funding badly built 'pipe bombs' Munchers (jalapeño poppers) are the bomb though, literally."

It’s always wiser to wait until you have information before making conclusions.

Certainly. You get on the airplane. You watch the news and you see that a bomb went off in NYC. There’s the information. Then you get off the plane and at the gathering of reporters you say a bomb went off in NYC. There’s the conclusion.

But was our hostess chiding Trump or was she taking us Trump supporters to task for assuming a Moslem from Afghanistan setting off bombs in NYC is ipso facto an act of terror?

His name doesn't answer the question, and in fact, his backstory suggests a plausible theory of a more personal sort of violent acting out.

Motive. It is SO important to lawyers. But is she aware of the weak point of her comparison and distinction-drawing? Yes.

I know, it doesn't explain schlepping the bombs to Chelsea …

I doubt we’ll find out anything from this terrorist one way or another about motivation once he lawyers up. I suspect he intended a different target, in fact several of them from the amount of bombs(five at last count) found in the abandoned backpack in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Another weak point?

But it looks to me that for some reason he got paranoid, panicked and discarded the backpack full of bombs in a handy trashcan. If some trashpickers hadn’t been trolling the local trashcans it might never have been found. It would have ended up in a New Jersey trash dump, unknown and never in evidence. Ah, the vagaries of fate …

Looking pretty good at the moment even including expected fraud. How is that republican voter registration coming along? Not seeing many stories on that are we? Has anyone seen a single Hillary bumper sticker or yard sign anywhere? I am in Seattle and I have seen 0.

"But was our hostess chiding Trump or was she taking us Trump supporters to task for assuming a Moslem from Afghanistan setting off bombs in NYC is ipso facto an act of terror?"

I'm pretty sure it's neither. I think she was saying that it's unfair to accuse Trump of jumping to conclusions about there being a bomb when that conclusion was very well supported, and especially since it was the same conclusion that pretty much everybody else came to, including Hillary.

This reminds me of the excuses that Clinton was making to discredit the witnesses against him in the Broaddrick rape. "They must have been lying because they were mad at me for letting the guy who killed their friend out of prison." Not as bad as "She must have been lying because her husband hit her in the mouth once." But pretty close.

I am exhausted. I am exhausted of speaking out against Islamophobia and reminding my conservative midwestern family about all of the peaceful Muslims in NYC. I am exhausted as well that when the name of the suspect was released, I thought, "yup, of course his name was Ahmad Khan Rahami" - somehow deep down I knew that this was another young male committing terrorism. I am exhausted of trying to fight off the initial instincts of distrust and fear that wash over me every time such an event transpires. I am exhausted of reminding myself to not judge an entire community by their bad apples. I am exhausted of feeling guilty for my growing concern about Islamic homegrown terrorists in this country even as I publicly cringe at the fear-mongering and xenophobia seen in the media. I am exhausted of trying to take the high road yet feeling increasingly unsure of why I am on that road at all.

He/she forgot being exhausted of having liberals call you a racist or an Islamophobe for saying the obvious. The people who are tired of being called names for this, or for noticing that some of the black men killed by police might have been doing something illegal, or for saying that just because you want to live in the US doesn't mean you have a right to enter our country illegally -- we're the ones who will send Trump to the White House in November.

I'd like to make conclusions and also make Hillary a lovely party. But first things first: we need common sense laws regulating pressure cookers (after all, each pressure cooker already contains a regulator) and we must close the housewares show loophole. As for the First American Fried Chicken story, where is Ernie Anastos when we need him? Keep fucking that chicken!

2001: Mysterious, ascetic and charismatic Muslim radical organizes and sponsors widespread attack on United States. The World Trade Center towers are destroyed, the Pentagon damaged and thousands die. It takes over a decade to hunt him down in a hideout in Pakistan.

2016: Disaffected obese loser Muslim radical blows up some dumpsters. Scores are injured but no deaths result. Within 48 hours he is captured after found sleeping in a doorway in Linden, New Jersey. (Yes, it was a sleeper cell.)

What's the difference? Many of course. But one important one is that in the latter case the man had come to our country with our invitation and become a citizen.

"MikeR, you might think that you do not want your president and the mayor of your largest city guessing about things like that, especially in a country with a long history of bombings by non-Muslims, and in a country where the deadliest bombing was by a non-Muslim." Uh, no. Your bringing past history to avoid understanding the present isn't going to fly with anyone who cares about reality. Tell me about the Crusades, too?

"It’s always wiser to wait until you have information before making conclusions."

Actually seemed like a fairly "safe" generic response by an exhausted lady, to me.Almost every time something happens, initial story does not resemble the facts.So, her response was more general than specifically referring to Trump saying "bomb". Media spin, not the drugged lady, created the controversy,

"Actually seemed like a fairly "safe" generic response by an exhausted lady, to me.Almost every time something happens, initial story does not resemble the facts.So, her response was more general than specifically referring to Trump saying "bomb". Media spin, not the drugged lady, created the controversy,"

True enough, except that Hillary's answer was in direct response to a question about Trump jumping to conclusions, the same conclusion she had.

Not garden variety, unless it's a poisonous and dangerous garden. We have millions of disgruntled, but few of them blow things up and try to kill people.

Terrorism's sponsors aim to convert the passively disgruntled into violent actors. It does not have to be done by direct contact. Disgruntlement has a tendency to attach to ideology. If the ideology is violent, you have a terrorist.

We do not know yet whether this person had made the disgruntlement-ideology connection. But the fact that he is obviously disgruntled for garden variety reasons, does not eliminate his being a terrorist.

As I understand it so far, the police had a picture out of the terrorist, and one of the cops looking for ran into him and recognized him from his picture. The terrorist pulls out a gun and shoots the cop center mass somewhere and really HS away. The cop luckily was wearing a vest, and so was relatively unhurt. Other police responded, got into a brief gun battle with him, where he was wounded and apprehended. At l saw by that story, he shot first, so they would have been legally justified sending him to Allah, but didn't.

Sorry, Apple spell check again. Meant to saw that the terrorist shot the cop in the chest, then ran away.

Reminded me a bit of a Jesse Stone (Tom Selleck) movie I saw recently. A couple ran around killing people (including Selleck's girlfriend) with a couple of shots to the chest. Two different guns were used, both .22 caliber. In the end, he gets them to meet him, and the woman pulls out two guns and shoots him in the chest. At which time, he pulls out what looked like a .45 1911, and puts two in her chest, killing her. While waiting for backup, he undoes his jacket and loosens up his vest, which took her two rounds. You would think that she would have tried for a head shot, but her MO was two shots to the chest, and that was what Selleck planned for.

The media will go to nearly any lengths to avoid calling these events 'jihad'. The Qur'an 2:191 tells Muslims to 'kill them [infidels] wherever you find them'. It was not surprising to hear that neighbors and customers considered the family 'very nice'. Muslims usually are. That doesn't mean they don't plan to kill us. They're not doing it out of spite or evil intent. They're doing it for Allah. That's why there is almost never any outrage from the Muslim community. Only a concern about 'islamophobia'.

Jupiter said..."Another question is whether Rahami is connected to ISIS or some other radical Islamist terrorist group."

Rahami is a Muslim. So, yes, he is a sworn member of an international terrorist organization. Ask Constantinople about that.

That hits the nail right on the head. Copied it to my facebook page. I'm going to steal it for future posts on other blogs. And maybe for future posts here. "He's a muslim, he's a sworn member of an international terrorist organization."

Past history?. You don't know what you're talking about. I am not talking about the Crusades (though most self-proclaimed Christians know embarrassingly little about them). I'm pointing out facts about our contemporary country.

Writing things like "anyone who cares about reality" is cheap rhetoric. You don't know what you're talking about, and you're just spouting talking points. You're a bullshitter, and what you said was bullshit.

And Harold and Jupiter, you two also are bullshitters. Being muslim does not equate to being a sworn member of an international terrorist organization.

1) "Islam" is not an organization in any adult sense of the term.

2) "Islam" is not terrorism. Thinking that is childish and stupid. It is true that there are violent Islamic extremists, and it is also true that there are countries dominated by Islam which are violent. Likewise, it is true that there are violent Christian extremists, and it is also true that there are countries dominated by Christianity which are violent. It is true that there are portions of Islamic holy texts which espouse violence, and it is also true that there are portions of Christian holy texts which espouse violence.

The things you two are saying are just empty bullshit, and you all deserve to be called out as blathering, talking-point repeating idiots. You're bullshitters, angry, loathsome bullshitters.

Bad journalism invades every online publication now. They can't get the basic who what when why, how and where. Everyone bitches about it in the comments, but it's not improving. They've fired all the editors.

Craig, you don't get to define Islam. Muslims and the koran define islam. Well, actually, the quran defines islam, and self proclaimed religious leaders since islam has no central authority. Let's take a small sample:

Quran (5:33) - "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement"

Quran (9:14) - "Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of a believing people."

That's a few of the messages of the Religion of Peace™ holy book.

From a shia leader:

When anyone studies a little or pays a little attention to the rules of Islamic government, Islamic politics, Islamic society and Islamic economy he will realize that Islam is a very political religion. Anyone who will say that religion is separate from politics is a fool; he does not know Islam or politics.

Happy are those who have departed through martyrdom. Unhappy am I that I still survive.... Taking this decision is more deadly than drinking from a poisoned chalice. I submitted myself to Allah's will and took this drink for His satisfaction.

Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all....There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of Mohammed] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim!

All the above by ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

The below 1992 by Imam Sirhaj Wahhaj, who has served (does serve?) on the national board of CAIR.

“If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, we’d elect our own emir and give allegiance to him. Take my word, if eight million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.”

And the same year in Brooklyn:We don’t need to arm the people with 9mms and Uzis. You need to arm them with righteousness first. And once you arm them with righteousness first, then you can arm them.”

“I will never tell people, ‘Don’t be violent.’ That’s not the Islamic way.”

I am ready to sacrifice everything in completing the unfinished agenda of our noble jihad... until there is no bloodshed in Afghanistan and Islam becomes a way of life for our people. Mohammed Omar

Nobody, absolutely nobody, straps a bomb on their body because they were recruited from the Internet. It takes an enormous amount of personal face-to-face contact and time in order to recruit a young person into the cause of jihad. Reza Aslan

If you're Muslim- you believe in the Koran, and follow it. And, you listen to sermons from imams and other "acclaimed" religious leaders who call for violence and war against unbelievers.

CAIR immediately came out with statements warning the rest of us not to backlash against muslims. They didn't come out and condemn the actions they're worrying about backlash from.

Like I said Craig, you don't get to define islam, muslims do. And this a sermon delivered last Wednesday, in a mosque, by a member of The Religion of Peace™:

A preacher at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem called for the destruction of Moscow and Washington, D.C. in a sermon last Wednesday.

Palestinian cleric Abdallah Ayed claimed that “Allah has promised us both places, Allah promised the prophet Muhammad that Islam would rule the entire land.” He called for the realization of that scenario: “Oh Allah in these blessed days and from your al-Aksa mosque, the center of blessings…we seek you to vanquish America and Russia. Oh Allah, blow up their capital cities and their planes, pulverize their ships and kill their soldiers.”

“Oh Allah, we ask You to subjugate them and burn them, just like they have subjugated us and burned our children with napalm,” Ayed continued. He also called for a return of the Islamic Caliphate.

Name one, just one, that's all, just one Christian theocracy in the world. Just one. That's all. Just one. The world waits for your enlightened answer.

And while you're at it, name one largely Christian country where the practice of other religions is banned, and blasphemy is punishable by death. Come on, we're waiting.

And, name one, just one, majority Christian country where the religious leaders call for violence against non-believers. One, just one, that's all.

Quote a verse from the New Testament that preaches violence or terrorism. Contrast NT teaching with this: Quran 8:12 – “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them”

1) That was easy and obvious: The Holy See. (And for closely related matters, see this.)

2) You surely know that the Christian Bible is filled with instances of vicious violence, and you surely know that the history of Christianity is marked by horrific evil done in Christ's name. (You can find instances of that, for example, in the list of recent terrorist killings in the United States I posted above.) It might be true that I don't get to define Islam; your bullshit Internet selective quotation does not either.

3) There are many blasphemy-barring states: "In the Americas, 10 out of 35 countries (29%) had blasphemy laws [as of 2014], including the Bahamas, where the publication or sale of blasphemous material can be punished with up to two years imprisonment. The U.S. does not have any federal blasphemy laws, but as of 2014, several U.S. states – including Massachusetts and Michigan – still had anti-blasphemy laws on the books. However, the speech and religion clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would almost certainly prompt a court to ban the enforcement of any such law." (source)

4) The United States. See, e.g., Pat Robertson. (But here, we mostly have our Christian politicians doing this dirty work, since we are lazy Christians.)

5) Do you know what "false equivalency" means? I didn't say that Christianity and Islam functioned in wholly identical ways. (If I did say that, please point it out to me, and I'll fix my error.) Instead of refuting what I actually said, you change your argument. If you want to retreat to the far weaker claim that Christian terrorists operate using different mechanisms than Islamic terrorists, that's fine by me I suppose. Or if you want to retreat to the different, but still far weaker claim that some states where Islam is practiced are illiberal, sometimes viciously so, that, too, is fine by me. But your original claim, that Islam is an international terrorist organization remains bullshit, tendentious, vicious, malignant bullshit.

Of course there are problems with extremism, and of course there are problems with Islamic extremism. But to infer from that, even from the scale of those problems, that Islam as an 'international terrorist organization' (nb - I take it you accept that you were way off base with the 'organization' talk; good for you for recognizing that) is bullshit, and you deserve to be called out as a bullshitter.

The suggestion that the Quran is violent and the Christian Bible (which includes both New and Old Testaments) is not is bullshit. The practice of Christianity widely reflects (bad, imho) Christians fetishizing the violent directions of the Christian Bible.

Your link above doesn't actually show what you think it shows. For a faith that historically included about 90+% of the US population, the acts that could be called Christian terrorism are rather sparse.

The "violence" in the Bible is mostly in the histories, which are the histories of the Jewish "state" in the ancient middle east. It's not especially bloodthirsty by the standards of the times. Even those passages that refer to exterminating this or that tribe ("putting under the ban") never seemed to have happened historically. It just seemed to be some later author's idea of a good idea in order to pretend to maintain endogamous purity. If they did, no one has found any archaeological evidence for it, and they've looked.

Even all those nasty laws in the Pentateuch that seem so harsh to the modern mind. Most of them just never seemed to have been enforced. Is there a record anywhere in the ancient Judaic world of an homosexual having been put to death?

"Christianity marked by horrific evil". Such as? I'm really quite well acquainted with Church/European history, & there are things which I think are horrific evils, but they're probably not what you think are. So, give us an example or two of an horrific Christian evil.

Number of times the Iran head of state or other Iran leader has called for war or destruction of another country since 1990- a whole lot of timesNumber of times the Pope has called for war or destruction of another country since 1990: zeroNumber of people executed for apostasy, adultery, drinking, or similar crimes since 1990 in Iran: over 100, possibly less then 1,000.Number of people executed by the Vatican since 1929- zero

Just a little bit of difference in numbers. Then there's sharia in Saudi Arabia, sunnis, not shia. Number of people executed for witchcraft since 2000: At least 3, Vatican since 1929: zero.

By using The Holy See as an example of Christian Theocracy, you're kind of proving the point that Islamic theocracies are by nature and design violent and expansionist, and Christian ones aren't.

>> Did Rahami behave aggressively toward the police or was he only running away?

Linden Police had received a call complaining that an unknown individual was sleeping in the doorway of a local bar and went there to wake the man up, assuming he was just a ordinary sleeping drunken bum.

Then they noticed that he had a beard and resembled the wanted person from a poster that had been circulated because a fingerprint from Rahami had been connected to a bomb.

They asked him to show his hands (bad move?) and then he pulled out a gun and began to shoot and fled, exchanging fire with police and sending a barrage of bullets down the street.

Two cops were hurt. One was hit in the abdomen at close range when Rahami fired from the doorway, but the officer was protected by a bulletproof vest and another cop was injured in the face by ricocheting debris. Rahami was sent to the hospital and eventually into surgery.

>> Another question is whether Rahami is connected to ISIS

He visited Afghanistan and Pakistan which is more al Qaeda territory, and the pressure cooker bomb was promoted by al Qaeda, but there is now some ISIS activity too. ISIS didn't even exist (as a breakaway group anyway) until 2014. Or was that already in 2013?

The guy in Minnesota also sounded more al Qaeda than ISIS since it is al Qaeda that decided to make apoint of not killing Muslims to disntinguah themselves from ISIS.

As far as this goes, not a single non-Islamic state but for the Holy See is a theocracy. And of further note, the only nations in the world where the practice of other religions is circumscribed, regulated, or forbidden are Islamic nations, or Communist Countries. North Korea and Juche are an outlier in more ways then one, referring to Juche as a religion by itself is a questionable judgment call I think.

I also find it odd the Wikipedia editors have nothing listed under Protestantism, but have Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Methodism listed as official state religions. All of which are generally recognized by most as Protestant religions.

In the western world, official state religions are pretty moribund. They exist pretty much as shells of their former selves.

Craig: "Mockturtle, The suggestion that the Quran is violent and the Christian Bible (which includes both New and Old Testaments) is not is bullshit. The practice of Christianity widely reflects (bad, imho) Christians fetishizing the violent directions of the Christian Bible."

Craig please do tell us why it's important to allow Muslim immigration into the country. How are we benefited? Why is it incumbent upon us to allow members of a creed that a significant percentage of its adherents are hostile to America and it's values?

Hey, I thought it was customary for attendees to bring a dish and a gay to Lutheran pot luck dinners. After they're done chowing down on the potato salad and roast beef sandwiches, they have a contest to see who can make the longest throw when they're tossing gays off the roof.

BTW, one big difference between refugees now and a hundred years ago, is that the latter had to [mostly] get here on their own accord. It wasn't just handed to them. Most of my ancestors had to sell almost everything they owned, have an unpleasant sailing trip across the Atlantic and ultimately walk (yes walk) 1200 miles to where they had to build their own houses since the town of their destination didn't yet exist.

(Of course, then there's that ancestor who probably conned his way over here. But, still, it wasn't handed to him!)